Saturday, November 28, 2009

A very speedy visit to the ER

When I started coughing up tiny bits of blood yesterday I realised I needed someone to listen to my chest again and check that I hadn't managed to get pneumonia. Our doctors' office was closed for Thanksgiving and the nurse line for our insurance said I should go to the ER and thankfully it's covered 100%, so we didn't have to worry about that.

I was in and out in about 35mins, must have hit them at a slow time! I saw a physician's assistant rather than a doctor and she decided that I had subacute bronchitis and the blood likely came from my throat being irritated by the repeated coughing. So she prescribed me some stronger cough medicine.

We took the prescription along to the pharmacy and the assistant told us it wasn't a prescription but an over the counter medicine, but didn't give us any help with finding it, I had a good look and came to the conclusion she was wrong, but instead of going back to the pharmacy counter I went home in a grump.

I called the hospital and they told me to take it back to the pharmacy and have them call the hospital if they couldn't work it out. The next person I gave it to took one look at it and told me it was a very strong cough medicine that was definitely prescription only, so they filled it and I went home!

It actually seems to work, I was a bit skeptical as I'd already been taking a prescription one without much luck, so hopefully this will now be the start of getting better!